In 1980 there was an article published in Yoga Journal by Joel Kramer. He talked about the balance between control and surrender and about how in yoga you have pushers and surrenders and that the pushers need to learn to surrender and this surrenderers need to learn to push. This idea became a central idea in my yoga teaching. It is an example of how the practice of yoga is about creating balance, often between oppositional forces: right and left, distal and proximal, inhale and exhale, backbends and forward bends, strength and flexibility, work and release, for example. There is an anatomical aspect to this. For example, if one muscle group or muscle is over tight, or over stretched we can rebalance the body by working not just on the muscle, but by its opposing antagonists and/or its synergists. But this goes beyond Anatomy (just as yoga is about more than muscles and tendons). We all have a tendency to move and explore those aspects of ourselves, and those disciplines that are most interesting to ourselves, and that we do best.

However, when we move out of our comfort zone we learn something about ourselves . I also think that we can deepen one sort of practice by moving in an opposite direction and coming back to it. And perhaps even more importantly, when we explore a different area we don't just learn new skills and improve our old skills, but we can discover commonalities that we wouldn't expect. In a larger sense it allows us to find the deeper connections that bind us. For example I've blogged before about my experience as a yoga teacher taking spin. http://blog.ideafit.com/blogs/ariadne-greenberg/a-yogini-s-thoughts-on-taking-a-spin-class

There are many different kinds of yoga practice. If you wanted to list and sort them, you could see they exist on a number of a continuums: from more structured to less structured, from more anatomically scentered to more physiologically centered, from more restorative to more physically challenging. (There are also what might be considered to be specialized types or niche markets of yoga. Some of these are for specialized populations, chair or pregnancy yoga for example, and some really push the boundries of the core definition of yoga, but, well, a little pepper and paprika can take the taste buds in interesting places.)

In any case there are a great many sorts of practice. On the gentler end you have Yoga Nidra probably aon the far end, with yin and restorative on that side. On the other side you have practices like the classic Ashtanga vinyasa of Pattabhi jois and Bikram. Bikram sits at the end of intensity in terms of heat, although in terms of strength and complexity of postures I think there are harder practices.

So how did I end up teaching restorative at a Bikram studio?

Like a lot of teachers I occasionally will look through postings by people in the yoga world and in my local community. I am dealing with my own dichotomy: a desire to teach more, practice more, train more, and go to lots of studios, and a life that makes all these things challenging. But I am always open to possibility. In any case one day I happened to see a notice from an owner of a Bikram Studio who is looking for a Yin teacher for her studio and it caught my eye because it's the sort of thing I admire a lot that somebody who is on one end of the spectrum is interested in the other, that a teacher who specializes in something is interested in learning other paths, and that a studio owner wanted to offer her students and clients the chance to explore these inherent dualities. I have done Yin, but made a decision a while ago that it wasn't something I wanted to teach. However I do sometimes teach restorative so I went to talk to her. And immediately loved her as a person, and admired the way she ran her studio. And then from there became the restorative future at the Bikram Studio.

My way of approaching this was not to give a cookie-cutter restorative class but to try to give the students each day that which they needed. In other words to provide the restorative balance from which people who typically take Bikram might benefit, to adapt restorative principles to the needs of the Bikram students. To do that well, I have had to try Bikram myself.

Up to this point I had not done this style of practice. In part it is because I had had students tell me things that were not appealing to me. For example, that they were ordered not to drink water unless the teacher gave them permission. What I discovered is that, just as with restorative, or with vinyasa, Bikram classes can vary. The teachers I have had and the experiences I have had thus far have been good and welcoming and interesting. And I can leave out bits that don't work for me, or get a drink between postures if I need.

Bikram is a highly structured practice. The movements are done in a defined series, and for defined amounts of time in a very hot room. The primary principle, as I see it, is self discipline and self control. So in restorative we turn the heat to just pretty warm, and we choose movements based on what we are feeling at the moment, and work on figuring out what that is. We also work on how to release the breath and the mind along with the muscles. We use external supports (not used in Bikram) as a way to practice yielding control. We also practice inward focus, with an emphasis on pratyhara. Which brings me to the mirrors.

The hardest thing for me in Bikram is the continued insistence on looking in the mirror. As far as I can make out (and clearly I need to do some reading on the theoretical underpinnings of the Bikram path) the idea is that we use our outwardly directed visual sense to see and thus correct our own alignment. And here is one of those commonalities buried in a huge difference. When I begin class I often ask students to shut their eyes for a few moments. The goal is to use proprioception to feel alignment, as well as energy level, and mood, and so on, but to do it by moving inward. But what I realized is they were going through rather than under. By looking at the form you are just taking a different path to the same place. The danger in looking at yourself in a mirror is that you can get trapped in ego, or self judgement, OR you learn to look at your form with honesty burning away the ego in the heat. As opposed to in my practice in which I attempt to embrace and flow and allow the ego simply to be washed away. You will notice, if you look at the blog on the cycle class, that idea of the choice of fire or water comes up as well.

There are a few ways in which I will likely always bend to my primary way of being.... to adapt from an inner understanding of my being. My neck does not enjoy the deep backword bend of the first breathing exercise, although I love the breathing itself. There is also at least one posture my knee resists. With an old hip injury I need to move carefully there. But I am open to the possibility I will find those paths open to me. I suspect the self discipline is good for me, as it is not my natural strength. And I really love the students. They have been open, and curious, and welcoming. But then there are few students with whom I have been privlidged to work that I have not enjoyed and from whom I have not learned.

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I was introduced to yoga when my mom took me to a studio as a child in the late 60s. This began a journey that has meandered back and forth through yoga, philosophy, fitness, and parenthood. My main residential teacher training was at the White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, but I also studied several years with an Iyangar trained teacher, and have done workshops with Beryl Birch, Baron Baptiste, Lilias, David Swenson and many others. I have a BA in Philosophy from George Washington University, with an emphasis on metaphysics. I began teaching yoga and later group exercise in the late 1980s, and was in the vanguard of teachers bringing yoga from the ashram into the exercise club. I wrote on fitness, wellness, and yoga for a number of newsletters, and served as associate editor for the Journal of the Midatlantic Yoga Association for a couple of years. I first became an ACE certified group exercise instructor in 1990, and later completed 2 years of graduate study in exercise science. I believe my strengths are attention to detail, individual modification, and encouragement to kindness and acceptance for self and others. I strive always to deepen my practice physically, intellectually and spiritually.
For my schedule: http://www.yogatrail.com/teacher/ariadne-greenberg-77078/schedule